Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Motor City’s Woodward Dream Cruise Remains a Suburban Affair

By Mary M. Chapman August 19, 2010 1:34 pmAugust 19, 2010 1:34 pm

Paul Stenquist for The New York Times

In southeastern Michigan, the third Saturday of August is reserved for car worship. Lawns go unmowed and errands are postponed as some 1.5 million people descend on one of the Detroit area’s best-known thoroughfares, Woodward Avenue, for an ad hoc parade of vintage automobiles that pays tribute to Detroit’s glory days.

Called the Woodward Dream Cruise, the 16-mile-long party is a source of pride for many residents of the metropolitan area. In a region long riven by racial strife, the Dream Cruise — which takes place on Saturday for the 16th year — is a unifying love-in preceded by several days of polishing, preening and parking lot car talk.

But one thing remains missing from the Dream Cruise: Detroit itself.

Paul Stenquist for The New York Times

The event, often called the nation’s largest single-day celebration of classic-car culture, wends through a chain of suburbs but stops short of the city whose name is synonymous with the American auto industry. The cruise’s avoidance of the Motor City seems odd to some, alienating to others.

Perhaps because the cruise remains a suburban affair, some black car enthusiasts skip it altogether, choosing to show off their classic rides elsewhere.

“It’s not a knock against the Dream Cruise per se,” said Derrick Johnson, an out-of-a-job Detroit construction worker who went to the event just once. He prefers to gather with his car buddies in a parking lot on Detroit’s east side. “We just feel a little bit more comfortable doing this,” he said, rather than venturing into the suburbs.

Black workers have played a large role in automaking for almost as long as the industry existed. Henry Ford’s assembly line welcomed laborers from the South, spurring the migration that made Detroit a black-majority city in the 1970s. Relatively generous wages, later enhanced with union benefits, generated upward mobility for blacks. The assembly line was one of the few places here where black and white residents mixed regularly, and in Michigan, a shared love of cars transcends racial, ethnic and religious boundaries.

But when it comes to celebrating Detroit’s best-known products, the partygoers do not seem particularly diverse.

Some longtime residents suggest that the issue isn’t that the Dream Cruise is exclusionary, but that Eight Mile Road, the northern border of Detroit and the line that separates urban Wayne County from suburban Oakland and Macomb Counties, remains a social barrier in the minds of many. South of Eight Mile — made famous around the world by the 2002 Eminem film — most of the population is black; above it, blacks are a distinct minority. Racial tensions, inflamed by the devastating Detroit riots of 1967, still surface.

“The area’s politics are historical,” said William R. Chapin, president of the Automotive Hall of Fame in suburban Dearborn. “Still, plenty of people in town feel like the Woodward cruise should extend to Detroit.”

There are no plans to make such a change, although the prospect has been discussed many times, said Tony Michaels, executive director of the Woodward Dream Cruise.

He said the route, which starts at Nine Mile Road in the community of Ferndale, had been established with nostalgia in mind. “It was a grass-roots idea that people would come out and hit the Woodward corridor like they used to, where all the restaurants and drive-ins were,” Mr. Michaels added.

Paul Stenquist for The New York Times

The Dream Cruise extends into Pontiac, a city that is about half black. That city is represented on the board of the Dream Cruise by the Rev. Douglas Jones, the only black director. He said the fact that the event skipped Detroit had not gone unnoticed.

“We just couldn’t figure out a way to cover the vacant stretches, and then there was the cost of police,” he explained, alluding to forlorn sections of Woodward Avenue inside the city proper.

Still, Mr. Jones said the Dream Cruise in its early years had held some events at the state fairgrounds in Detroit, just south of Eight Mile Road. Although the cruise does not enter the city, he characterized the event as an inclusive one, saying the board had always encouraged participation from all car clubs, including those with predominantly black members.

One such club is Capitol City Entourage of Lansing, Mich. One of the club’s founders, Charles Watts, checked out the Dream Cruise last year, driving his 2009 white-over-red Mercury Grand Marquis with oversize wheels. He said he enjoyed rubbing shoulders with fellow car enthusiasts and might attend again this Saturday. But to his club, the main event of the year is the African-American Parade in Lansing.

“We like to support our culture and show that we like cars, too,” said Mr. Watts, whose fellow club members favor old-school rides like the Chevy Monte Carlo and Caprice, the Pontiac Grand Prix and the Ford Crown Victoria.

The Dream Cruise has grown remarkably from its modest start as a fund-raiser for a suburban children’s soccer field. According to the organizers, some 40,000 vintage cars now participate, benefiting about 100 charities and pumping $56 million into the local economy.

Notwithstanding the region’s historically suspicious, and sometimes acrimonious, politics, blacks and Latinos widely view the Dream Cruise as a favorable, nonthreatening event, even if they don’t attend, said Ron Scott, a former autoworker.

“It’s not a question of whether black people mind crossing Eight Mile, because many do,” said Mr. Scott, now a community organizer in Detroit who has helped to set up small car clubs. “It’s just the fraternity and exchange of culture that you get with these other activities that allows enjoyment of more than just the car. It’s not really that we don’t feel welcome.”

In fact, he added, many blacks participate in both the Cruise and in predominantly black gatherings of enthusiasts.

Even if the Dream Cruise never enters Detroit, Mr. Scott said that involving more blacks would be a smart economic move.

“It’s amazing that this hasn’t happened in the past, if only because of what it would do to commerce,” he said. “Any young person who spends $4,000 on spinning wheels, these are people who are working or who own businesses and would love to support something like this.”

Detroit’s mayor, Dave Bing, said bringing the Dream Cruise into Detroit would help to foster regional unity. In response to a question, he said through a spokesman: “Any celebration of the auto industry is incomplete without the city and the people that designed and manufactured the great vehicles that are part of this event. We would welcome the Dream Cruise down Woodward into the heart of Detroit. It would represent another important step in cooperation on a regional scale.”

Michael Farrow, president of the Farrow Group, a Detroit-based demolition firm, speculated that the cruise’s presence in Detroit would increase sponsorships. “There has to be some hidden agenda why it doesn’t cross Eight Mile,” said Mr. Farrow, an African-American who owns a black 1962 Chevrolet Impala convertible. “I don’t hear anybody telling us to come on down.”

Other automotive celebrations inside the city have come and gone.

With the help of Robert A. Lutz, who retired this year as vice chairman of General Motors, Marvin Towns, an African-American movie producer and car collector, in 2002 established the Concours d’Élégance at Cranbrook, held at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Mr. Towns did this, he said, because he did not see enough diversity at the Meadow Brook Concours d’Élégance that took place on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester Hills.

Mr. Towns said that after the Cranbrook event ran out of money in 2006, he was asked by Kwame Kilpatrick, who was then mayor, to “do something in Detroit.” So Mr. Towns set up a two-day car exhibition downtown, the Detroit Festival of Speed and Style, the week after the Dream Cruise. It took place in 2007-8.

“It was about African-Americans and other people of color being able to get on a city bus and go to a cool car show,” Mr. Towns said.

There have been other efforts. Alan Miller, who until 2000 was the diversity public relations manager for Chrysler, established an event called Motor City Cruising, held concurrent with the Woodward Dream Cruise, at Fort Wayne, a historic site in southwest Detroit. The event took place in 2003-4 until it, too, ran out of cash.

“African-Americans have a certain affinity for American cars, so we had the Deuce and Quarters” — slang for the Buick Electra 225 — “and lots of old Fords and Chevys,” Mr. Miller said.

Mr. Michaels, the Dream Cruise director, said he had heard no complaints about a lack of diversity. “The magic of the Dream Cruise is that it’s all about everybody,” he said. “It’s an absolutely welcoming event.”

That sentiment was echoed by Mr. Towns, who said he loved the Dream Cruise.

“Real car people don’t care about color,” he said. “Grease is grease.”

What's Next

About

A team of New York Times contributors blogs about news, trends and all things automotive. Check back for insight, photos, reviews of cars and more. And remember to join the conversation — you can comment on the cars, offer your own reviews, and post questions in our reader comment area.

Archive

Recent Posts

The regular features of this blog, including Monday Motorsports, the Wheelies news briefs and reports on auto industry developments including vehicle recalls and technology updates, can now be found on the Automobiles Web page.Read more…

General Motors hasn’t offered a diesel passenger car since the diesel-powered Chevette chugged unceremoniously into its lineup in 1986. But the company is back with its efficient Chevrolet Cruze Turbo Diesel.Read more…